


The Seeds of Winter

by TwinkleToestheBerserker



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: F/M, Hades - Freeform, Persephone - Freeform, Persephone Goes Willingly With Hades (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 22:57:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20517827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinkleToestheBerserker/pseuds/TwinkleToestheBerserker
Summary: Persephone ate the seeds, and Zeus said she had to stay in the Underworld one month for each seed she ate. Some say it was six, others say it was three. How many does Persephone say it was?





	The Seeds of Winter

Hades took me from where I slept, in the field that day, and... that was it.

However many months later, he was still waltzing around me. He'd visit, every day, and just... talk. However many months of him just talking to me. Then my father came to get me. Hades agreed to give me back, but only if I could resist the temptation of food.

I hadn't eaten anything in all that time of course. I knew the rules. The minute I ate food here I was trapped. I was starving, but I wanted home. I wanted my mother to nag at me and be overly protective. I wanted the stifling garden at home. Everything planted in rows, instead of growing wild in fields. I wanted to go back to the life I had hated those months ago.

He paraded the food before me. Every denizen of the underworld, it seemed like, was carrying a tray. I'd never seen or heard of some foods - some I didn't want to know about, some still make my mouth water when I think about them. Endless tray after endless tray, for three days. And at the end of the third day, there he was, Hades himself, holding a tray of pomegranate seeds for me, the last in line.

He knelt before me, holding the tray out like a slave - like he, the King of the Underworld, was less than me - and offered me the seeds. He stared at me as he did, wordless, but that gaze spoke more to me than anything he had said for those months. More than the so-called garden he had built for me. More than my desire to go home, more than my father's presence, more even than the knowledge that the world above was freezing to death with me here.

"Please." He was saying, though silent. "Please, I am so lonely. Don't go."

I took the seeds.

**Some years I say I took three seeds.**

Those are the years like when I first left him. I swore I would never go back, no matter what deal Hades had made about me eating those seeds. I went home to my mother, to my life, to the world. I was so happy to be back. I dreaded going back to the dreary underworld in nine months, but I was determined to enjoy the time I had at home.

Instead, I hated being home.

I had thought Mother was stifling and overbearingly protective before. She had chased away all my suitors before Hades stole me from the field. Now, she kept me at her side at all times. She slept in my room when I refused to sleep in hers. At first, it was a comfort, a relief even, to have her there at night. But as the first week turned into the first month, I began to feel as I had before Hades took me.

I was trapped in a golden cage of my mother's making.

One night, nearly two months after I returned home, I crept from my bed while Mother was sleeping, and returned to the field where Hades had stolen me. It had always been my refuge when I was feeling restless. I refused to let him change that for me. I had played there as a small child. I had practiced my powers there. I had grown up there. The field was home, more even than my mother's house and hearth, and not even what Hades had done would change that.

Of course, he was waiting there for me.

We stared at each other for a long time after I found him there. He stood very still, very straight, as he watched me. Years later he told me he was afraid to move, to even breathe, for fear that I would run. All I thought then was that he looked powerful. That moment when he knelt before me, begging me with his eyes to stay, seemed years away.

He was darkness in the moonlight, and I could not have run from him if I tried.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, at last, breaking the silence after it had gone on too long.

He snapped his gaze away, looking over the field. There had been flowers growing here before he took me. Now they were beginning to return slowly, very slowly. "I come here often." He said, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear. "I have been hoping to find you here again since you left me."

"Since I went home." I snapped back. I folded my arms, trying to guard myself against the sadness in his face.

He took a step closer to me, and then another when I did not back away. "You don't remember, do you. When we first met."

I scowled. "It was shortly after you kidnapped me."

He smiled, continuing to walk slowly toward me. "You were a very young child. Perhaps you were four years old? You were making flowers. I told you nothing grew in the Underworld, and you gave me the first Asphodel flower."

I didn't remember.

"I suppose that is when you decided you were in love with me?" I asked dryly.

He stopped, now just a few inches in front of me. I resisted the urge to back away. "No." He said. "I thought you were a sweet child, but that is all." He reached out and tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. "I fell in love with you much later."

I slapped his hand away. "What you feel for me isn't love, Hades."

"Perhaps." He grabbed the hand that had slapped his and kissed it gently. I pulled my hand away, uncomfortable. He sighed and turned away. "Go back to your mother, Persephone."

"Wait, I..." I grabbed at his hand as he turned away, and he froze before turning back to me. I opened my mouth to say something, but something in his face made the words die in my throat. I closed my mouth and swallowed. Before I knew what was happening he had closed the distance between us and covered my mouth with his.

Once, twice, three times he kissed me. One hand held mine gently, and the other caressed my cheek lightly as he pulled away. "Goodnight. Until next we meet, my wife."

And then he was gone.

Several days later, after I had convinced myself that it didn't mean anything, that I was safe, that he wouldn't be there, I returned, and he was waiting. He smiled when he saw me and handed me a bouquet of Asphodel flowers. I scowled and threw them back in his face. He just laughed and kissed me again.

We met often, those next six months. Sometimes we argued. Or rather, I argued. He would never fight back. Sometimes we talked. Once we spent the whole night telling each other stories. I learned more about my father than I had ever known. Always he would kiss me three times before he left.

I never kissed him back.

At my mother's home, things did not get better. I finally ejected her from my room after an argument that brought half of Mount Olympus down to check on us, but it didn't make things better. She kept me at her side by day, working in the fields, helping to prepare the harvest as the months ticked by to my eventual departure.

By night, I sought out Hades more and more often.

"You're a wild thing." He said when I complained about my mother's clinging to me more than once. "It's part of why I took you." He tucked my hair behind my ear again, a favored sign of affection from him.

"You shouldn't have taken me at all," I grumbled halfheartedly.

He chuckled. "I wanted to offer you your freedom in the Underworld. To rule it beside me." He sighed. "Perhaps I was a little short-sighted. It was Zeus's idea."

I groaned. "Why would you listen to him?"

He smiled and leaned forward to kiss my cheek. "Because I am in love with you."

A month before I was to leave, Mother caught me sneaking back in. It was... not one of our better days as mother and daughter. After that, she forbid me to leave her house and assigned three nymphs to watch me at all times. I raged and cried the first week, dying to get outside, but I was trapped this time, and there was no escape for me.

It was at the end of the first week that I began dreaming. Little dreams at first. Hades holding my hand. Hades tucking my hair behind my ear. Hades smiling at me when I'd said something nasty to him. At the end of the second week, they changed. Hades caressing my cheek. Hades holding me against him. At the end of the third week, it changed again, in earnest. Those three kisses felt engraved on my lips. It was like he had been casting a spell over me the entire time. But I looked, and he hadn't. The only spell was in my mind.

The end of the month arrived, and Mother still refused to let me go, even when Zeus came to escort me. A week went by. I ate little and slept less. I felt as though I was dying. I didn't know what was wrong. I found myself crying often, weeping silently. Mother was convinced they were tears of relief, but they were tears of pure misery. Finally, Hades himself came to my mother's house to collect me. I watched from the doorway, feeling weak.

"You dare." My mother hissed as he stood before her, unflinching

"Demeter. She is my wife." He said quietly.

She slapped him. "She is my daughter first!"

Hades saw me then, watching them, torn between love and duty for my mother, and what I had begun to realize was love for my husband. He took a step toward me, a hand outstretched. "Persephone. Come with me."

"NO!" Mother stepped between us, her hands outstretched as though she could keep us apart by sheer force of will.

I knew, then, what I had to do.

I stepped forward and placed my hands gently on my mother's shoulders. "Mother," I said gently, quietly. "I love you. I promise I will return."

And then I placed my hand in Hades', and stepped willingly into his arms for the first time.

**Some years I say it was six seeds.**


End file.
